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It’s Homeless Week on Peak FM

It’s Homeless Week on Peak FM

Here's some advice on what to do if you see a homeless person sleeping rough in the snow

As freezing conditions hit North Derbyshire, for most of us, heavy snow is an inconvenience due to slippery pavements and the inevitable transport disruption.

If you don’t have a place to sleep, however, it can be deadly. Every time temperatures drop like this, rough sleepers risk their lives just trying to last the night.

It’s natural to want to help if you see someone struggling – and they probably will appreciate the offer of a hot drink or some food. But what they really need is a place to get out of the rough weather – and you can provide this by alerting homelessness P3DOT to their location by using the app streetlink.org.uk .

Emergency shelters have opened this week because of the cold, so the best thing you can do is make sure outreach volunteers know how to find anyone who may need them.

StreetLink operates across the UK, so you can get in touch with them about rough sleepers anywhere.

To make a report, give as much detail as possible about what the person looked like and the place where you saw them to help the outreach teams find them. Your report could lead to a homeless person getting a warm bed for the night and allow them to receive long-term support back into accommodation and work.

While it is helpful to provide StreetLink with as much information as possible, there’s no need to bother a person who doesn’t feel like chatting. Details such as appearance, times, dates and locations, should be enough for StreetLink to pass on to outreach team – anything else is the job of local services.